Soul?
How about making a good game, that's not only properly balanced, but actually surpasses it's predecessors in more than just graphics? It's 2022 and TW is no longer a small indie company. Imma just reiterate something I said before:
- More detailed politics:
- Alliances: trade, military, marriage, temporary truce to curb power of another realm, etc;
- Realm splits: rebellions, death of a ruler and resulting power vacuum, civil wars, betrayals, lands sold to other realms, etc;
- Covert ops: secret alliances between monarchs, bribes, assassinations/kidnappings of nobles/prominent figures, betrayals, etc;
- Ability to start and end wars by assassinating the king.
- Ability to force a realm or fortress to surrender:
- Kidnap a member of royal family (or other prominent figure) to force a ruler to submit;
- Starve a fortress by cutting off their supply lines and exits;
- Cripple a realm's economy by cutting off it's supply lines, sabotaging caravans, convincing other realms not to trade;
- Destroy a king's reputation among the populace;
- etc.
- More detailed real-time strategy:
- Proper pre-battle troops deployment with an option to get an overhead view;
- Ability to choose which troops, in particular, to include in the battle (if there's a limit to how many you can include);
- Ability to tell different parts of your troops, or even specific ones, exactly which targets to attack and which ones to ignore;
- Ability to get into overhead view (pause screen) at any point of the battle and order your troops around (commands will be carried out once battle is unpaused);
- etc.
- More detailed courtship:
- NPC nobles with actual ambitions and sense of competition;
- Ability to distinguish yourself (on battlefield, in trade, in strategy mind) and prove yourself more worthy than some NPC for some position (marshal, king, some noble title, a friend, a lover, etc.);
- NPCs holding grudges, that may take them as far as betray their realm and hunt you down with another army, or go after your friends/family;
- Bold NPCs unafraid to insult you, or your family, publicly. Your reaction will decide what the other NPCs think of you;
- Dueling lords over an insult;
- Dueling lords over a lady;
- Ability for NPCs and players alike to hit on another's wife;
- NPCs can even wage wars due to love afairs (love triangles, cheating, desire to impress a sadistic lady, etc);
- Friend NPCs abandoning their duties to come to your aid, when you are in need of it (depends on personality);
- Friend NPCs that helped you, but abandoned their duties, facing punishment. You can either try to save their skin, or abandon them. Both could have dire ramifications for your standing in the realm.
- etc.
- More detailed 3rd person combat (individual):
- Dodging;
- Crouching;
- Better spear combat - spears could be held overhead, and used effectively at short distance;
- Better spear combat - long spears can be used to hit enemy over the shoulder of friendly troops;
- deflect&riposte - precisely timed and directed attack can deflect opponent's weapon and damage the opponent, at the same time;
- etc.
- More detailed field combat:
- Properly working formations (effective shield walls, turtle/testudo formation, smooth transition into attack);
- Properly working spears (spear bracing against cavalry, phalanx/rows of spears against infantry);
- Properly working cavalry (proper charge formations, that don't break);
- Archers not being OP;
- Ability to use terrain to your advantage:
- Fall trees/rocks/build barricades to interfere with cavalry charges;
- Drive enemy forces into a chokepoint when outnumbered.
- Better Battle AI:
- Uses proper formations, instead of just charging or sitting in map corner;
- Uses terrain elevation and features (trees, other obstacles) to it's advantage;
- Gives different target priorities to different troops (e.g. cavalry flanking towards archers, or to hit infantry formations from rear)
- etc.
- Additional immersion-increasing stuff, that existed in previous games:
- Dog companions;
- Hunting;
- Ambushes - must be changed though. They were seemingly chance-based upon engaging an enemy in Viking Conquest. Which was annoying;
- Feasts;
- etc.
If I saw these things, or at least like 90% of these, I'd consider the game good enough.
As with all games, "3D" takes up 80% of developers' time at the expense of "meaning". We then effectively have "soulless games" with an impression of a game of coders because we only see the mechanics of the game.
If we look at all the corrections, they are very much related to the coding of 3D fights, "multiplayer"... The "campaign" game and the "sandbox" are not the priority.
Many games suffer from the desire of players to want a perfect "3D", a "perfect" combat simulation. This takes : a crazy amount of time for the coders, and making sense of the game, implementing a more elaborate "political", "economic", "religious", "npc / rpg" dimension becomes secondary.
What matters to most players is the animation during a siege, it's the right combat simulation, it's the "perfect strategy" in real combat (impossible to ask, but the coders do their best to give the illusion), and all that takes a long time at the expense of "giving meaning to the game".
The 3D simulation of the fights acts like a cancer.
This is true for many games.
And I know what I'm talking about. Developing a strategy game with a 3D simulation to develop at the same time is the kind of project I would refuse to work on because I know what I would be forced to spend my time on.
I know a lot of coders who left the gaming world because of this. By dint of wanting to satisfy a "majority of players often idealized by managers", we end up making stupid games.
Often, managers take the players for fools (this is sometimes true) in a short-term vision: "to make the maximum profit in the shortest possible time". Conclusion: a lot of money comes in on a "tactical economic coup", but the game dies very quickly.
It means: the managers are wrong, the players are not fools. Players who are involved in a game for the long term are very demanding. And if you want a game to last, you have to make a quality game, that means thinking a lot about the background. This means thinking about the meaning of the game, its long-term future, having more teams working on each dimension of the game (economic, political, religion, npc, rpg, interactions, "fun"... and a little less about simulation and animations). You even need a "fun" team, that is to say one that always thinks about making the game as "fun" as possible or at least thinking about the consistency of the whole thing so that it's interesting and fun to play. to play. For that you have to have a sense of the game, few managers have it.
At the same time, money must be brought in to pay the teams, or even to expand them. Because to do things well, you need a lot of people.
Friends who work in video games, worked from home or in dilapidated offices. They worked quite a lot of overtime (sometimes 50 hours a week). These hours were often unpaid. Sometimes they had no bounty. And all this for what ? To enter lines of code for a bloody game of... Super exciting work!
Behind that, there was the feedback from the players brought up by the "managers". Insults, contradictory instructions, stupid perceptions of the game to please as many players as possible (the managers believed),harassment, in the end you end up with a depression for 2000 Euros per month at 50 hours per week, work at night, on Sundays... ruined family life... And all this under the insults of the players. I have known...
Then you say:
"**** you all!" And you leave.
It's just a ****ty game after all...
Result: sometimes the company loses the best coders, those who know all the manufacturing secrets. They hire new people who don't understand anything. And that's ****...
Again harassment, anger, depression, arguments, social injustices and stupid players...
"It's just a game you bunch of rotten spoiled gamers!"
The second team resigns before the end of the trial period.
The game ends up without encoders. The managers take the money, close the company and go live in a tax haven.
This is the world of video games!!